House action on Christmas tree fee may spur Obama administration to move on issue

McKenzie Farms president McKenzie "Ken" Cook watches while helicopter pilot Jeffrey Linscott drops a bale of freshly-cut trees onto a landing zone near Barton in Clackamas County last November. Cook's company expected to ship 700,000 trees before Christmas.Quinton Smith/Special to The Oregonian

The committee agreed to include a provision in the Farm Bill that orders the U.S. Department of Agriculture to go ahead with the fee and the marketing program, which the Obama administration had put on ice 18 months ago.

Now, that action by the House Agriculture Committee may spur the White House to allow the agriculture department to go ahead with the change.

Doug McKalip, the senior policy advisor for rural affairs on the president's Domestic Policy Council, said in an interview Friday that the House action "is a really good sign" of an improved public understanding of how commodity check-off programs work. As a result, it's possible that the department could take action on its own without waiting for the farm bill to pass, he said.

Growers say they've been frustrated by how long they've had to wait to implement a marketing program similar to those mounted by dairies, beef producers and others.

The idea behind the check-off programs is that producers need to band together and assess themselves a fee to raise the money needed to promote their products and conduct research on how to improve them.

McKalip said it was "not at all" true that he told growers earlier this year that even though their program had merit, they weren't going to get it. That charge was made by Paul Schroeder, a Wisconsin tree grower who heads a group trying to get their commodity check-off program in place.